Academic bric-a-brac

When I'm really focused on a project, I liken it to being in a submarine with just a periscope view of the rest of the world.  You have a dim idea that something might be going on above the surface, but details are sketchy and there's no peripheral vision.  Having just polished off some drafts, however, I've been able to surface and catch up.  So here's a post to catch up on some academic effluvia from the past month.  First, there's William Deresiewicz's American Scholar essay about the handicaps of an elite education.  Here's the first paragraph:  It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house. Funny thing about this paragraph -- it generated a strong compulsion within me to drive down to New Haven and punch Deresiewicz in the face.  That or hang a big sandwich board around his head with the phrase "DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ACADEMICS" on both sides.  Seriously, I've read a few of Deresiewicz's essays, and might I suggest that the problems of elitism and stilted communication lie more with Deresiewicz than with the broader category of "well-educated American"?  The rest of the essay is just as frustrating -- wisps of insight followed by steaming piles of hackneyed, soilipsistic claptrap.  Second, there's Chad Orzel's lament about the innumeracy of intellectuals in Inside Higher Ed:  Intellectuals and academics are just assumed to have some background knowledge of the arts, and not knowing those things can count against you. Ignorance of math and science is no obstacle, though. I have seen tenured professors of the humanities say — in public faculty discussions, no less — “I’m just no good at math,” without a trace of shame. There is absolutely no expectation that Intellectuals know even basic math.... I’m not exaggerating when I say that I think the lack of respect for math and science is one of the largest unacknowledged problems in today’s society. And it starts in the academy — somehow, we have moved to a place where people can consider themselves educated while remaining ignorant of remarkably basic facts of math and science. If I admit an ignorance of art or music, I get sideways looks, but if I argue for taking a stronger line on math and science requirements, I’m being unreasonable. The arts are essential, but Math Is Hard, and I just need to accept that not everybody can handle it. This has real consequences for society, and not just in the usual “without math, we won’t be able to maintain our technical edge, and the Chinese will crush us in a few years” sense. You don’t need to look past the front section of the paper. Our economy is teetering because people can’t hack the math needed to understand how big a loan they can afford. We’re not talking about vector calculus or analytical geometry here — we’re mired in an economic crisis because millions of our citizens can’t do arithmetic. And that state of affairs has come about in no small part because the people running the academy these days have no personal appreciation of math, and thus no qualms about coddling innumeracy. I’m not entirely sure what to do about it, alas. I half want to start calling bullshit on this — to return the sideways looks when colleagues in the humanities and social sciences confess ignorance of science. I want to get in people’s faces when they off-handedly dismiss math and science, in the same way that they get in people’s faces for comments that hint at racial or gender insensitivity. I suspect that all this would accomplish is to get me a reputation as “that asshole who won’t shut up about math,” though, and people will stop inviting me to parties. Sadly, I don’t know what other solution there is. Orzel is a fellow Eph, so my advice to him is to go for the "withering aside" rather than the full-frontal diatribe.  This jibes with the fear of public intellectuals who are trained in the hard or social sciences.  That said, I'm not sure you can blame the credit crunch on bad math skills.  The financial wizards who created the more arcane structured investment vehicles were all pretty well schooled in math.  As for that ordinary schlub who took out the big-ass ARM on a McMansion, the problem wasn't a failure to understand the math -- it was the flawed expectation that asset prices would continue to rise and rise.  Finally, I'm happy to see that I should be happy with my career choice:  One of the concerns many academics have had in recent years is that the increased financial pressures in higher education and what critics call the “corporatization” of academe would make higher education a less desirable place to work. But a study presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association finds that academic scientists — in the natural and social sciences — are more satisfied than are their counterparts outside of higher education. The original hypothesis of the paper was that there might be a convergence of satisfaction levels, especially since satisfaction was defined in ways that stress traditional academic values, not more entrepreneurial ones. The scientists were asked about satisfaction with their independence and responsibility and the social contributions of their work — the sorts of factors that many fear are being lost as academic science at many universities is increasingly connected to the business world. (Although they were asked many other questions about their jobs, the satisfaction questions were defined in this way only.) The authors — Roberta Spalter-Roth of the sociology association and Grant Blank of Applied Social Research Associates — found instead that academic scientists (except psychologists) remain more satisfied than those outside academe. This could be because that whole "corporatization" theme is a bit overblown -- or more likely, that a self-selection process takes place within the academy, with more entrepreneurial sorts choosing to go get the big grants and such.  With a big birthday rapidly approaching, I was particularly cheered to notice this finding:  "Within academe, being older correlates with increased satisfaction in biology, physics and political science."  Psych!!